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I am an early adopter of Windows 10, and I am a .NET / Web developer so I like to push the bounds a bit when testing out a new OS. I also try to work against the latest / freshest builds available.
With prior releases of windows, when the Windows button and taskbar became unresponsive you could kill the explorer.exe process in Task Manager.
With Windows 10 (RC), the game has changed a bit. Anyone know how to reset the explorer.exe process?
How can I recover when the OS is hung up and the start button is unresponsive.
I'd prefer not to (a) log out or (b) restart.
This is more of a curiosity than a REAL problem, but thanks in advance!
UPDATE / CLARIFICATION
The new task manager doesn't show process names, and there is an application called "Windows Explorer" but I think its limited to the actual file browser (Explorer) and restarting it has no effect on the start menu.
Glenn Ferrie
Posted 2015-05-06T01:03:32.957
Reputation: 707
3Wait. Explorer is gone in Windows 10? – TheWanderer – 2015-05-06T01:05:35.530
1sorry good question. no, its there but it seems to only impact the File Explorer. not the Start button and task bar. – Glenn Ferrie – 2015-05-06T01:10:54.380
Have you looked for processes including
startandtask? Maybe also try ending the process tree. This is bad if Windows split them up. – TheWanderer – 2015-05-06T01:12:07.677the weird thing is that the IE replacement browser AKA Spartan seems to now be "connected" to the start button because that is non-responsive as well. but IE11 and Chrome work just fine. – Glenn Ferrie – 2015-05-06T01:13:52.037
Weird. There must be some new blanket process, like Explorer. – TheWanderer – 2015-05-06T01:14:34.773
2I suggest you come back to this question after a later build. Windows Explorer is still going to be Windows Exploer thus the process will be explorer.exe that isn't going to change. – Ramhound – 2015-05-06T11:07:54.810
I'm not at my Win 10 machine, but I believe that I was able to terminate and startup the
explorer.exeprocess. Did you 'expand' task manager to actually show processes instead of the running applications? – James Mertz – 2015-05-06T19:08:11.1331thanks for all of the feedback. I think we should wait until a later build and re-investigate. I was debugging something in VS 2015 RC on Windows 10 Insider Preview 10074 -- and the start button and taskbar became unresponsive and restarting explorer.exe wasn't effective. thought there was something else. -- will circle back later. thanks again. – Glenn Ferrie – 2015-05-07T13:11:47.027
5The new task manager indeed shows process names. Click "More Details" then go to the "Details" tab. That replaces the old "Processes" tab. You should see explorer.exe listed. – Dawn Benton – 2015-05-08T02:34:09.987